LAN Switch with Rapid Fault Recovery

1. A method of fault recovery by a switch in a local area network, the method comprising: a switch port detecting a link failure at a port of the switch; in response to the link failure detection, the switch clearing all medium access control (MAC) address entries from a MAC address table of the switch; and in further response to the link failure detection, the switch momentarily dropping a link on another port of the switch.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein clearing all MAC address entries from the MAC address table causes a discovery process to fill the MAC address table.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein momentarily dropping a link comprises stopping transmission of a link signal for a period of time.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein momentarily dropping the link on the other port causes propagation of the link failure to a next switch.

5. The method of claim 3 , wherein the link is momentarily dropped for a length of time sufficient for a next switch to detect the link drop.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the length of time is no more than fifty milliseconds.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the length of time is under ten milliseconds.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the MAC address table is cleared of all MAC address entries by overwriting each entry in the table with a template from a register.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the MAC address table is cleared of all MAC address entries by momentarily turning off power within the switch.

10. A network apparatus comprising: a medium access control (MAC) address table stored in the apparatus; and a plurality of ports of the network apparatus configured to communicatively connect the apparatus to other network devices, wherein a protocol is implemented for a plurality of ports of the apparatus, and the protocol is configured with instruction code which, upon detecting a link failure at one of the plurality of ports, clears the MAC address table of all MAC address entries therein and momentarily drops links on all other ports implementing the protocol.

11. The network apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the protocol is further configured with instruction code which, upon clearing all MAC address entries from the MAC address table, begins a discovery process.

12. The network apparatus of claim 11 , wherein a link is momentarily dropped by stopping transmission of a link signal for a period of time.

13. The network apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the network apparatus comprises a multi-port Ethernet switch.

14. A network comprising: a plurality of Ethernet switches in a redundant topology, wherein at least one switch implements a protocol for rapid fault recovery, wherein the protocol comprises, upon detecting a link failure at a port of the switch, clearing a medium access control (MAC) address table of all MAC address entries therein and momentarily dropping links on all other ports of the switch which implement said protocol.

15. The network of claim 14 , wherein upon clearing all MAC address entries from the MAC address table, a discovery process is begun by the switch.

16. The network of claim 15 , wherein momentarily dropping a link comprises stopping transmission of a link signal for a period of time.